Olympus PEN E-PL1

Shooting Modes (13.00)

The move from using a dial control on previous PEN cameras to relying exclusively on the four-way controller takes its toll when it comes to making adjustments while shooting. Adjusting program shift, aperture value in aperture-priority mode, and shutter speed value in shutter-priority mode requires pressing up and down on the four-way controller buttons. Pressing up, though, also triggers exposure compensation, with values changed by using the left and right buttons. And pressing down is the shortcut for setting the drive and self-timer mode.

Take a deep breath and follow along with just one example of how this gets ugly. You want to shoot in shutter-priority mode. You turn the mode dial and the current shutter speed and aperture values appear on screen. You press the down button on the four-way to lower the shutter speed value — d’oh! The drive mode control pops up on the screen (since that’s the default command for that bottom button). Backing out of that, you press up on the four-way to engage the shutter speed adjustment, and can then press down to lower the shutter speed… only, in the process, you’ve also engaged exposure compensation mode (the default value of the top four-way button), whose values are changed by pressing side to side on the four-way. And, if you actually take a picture using a particular shutter speed setting and want to lower it again — yep, you first have to press up on the controller before pressing it down. Can all this be done without a master’s degree? Yes. Is it elegant and intuitive? Not on your life.

The new iAUTO live guide system is an interesting way to give less savvy shooters more control over their photos. There’s no requirement that you tinker with the settings arrived at by the automatic system, of course; the live guide doesn’t even appear on the screen unless you press the START/OK button.

When you do, a slim panel slides out from the right side of the screen offering six options:

As you change settings, the effects are previewed live on-screen, so there’s no guesswork required. Live guide is not available when shooting with a flash, though.

As with the E-P1 and E-P2 before it, the E-PL1 offers sophisticated ways to store camera configurations, so you can load a group of settings instead of individually adjusting each one for different shooting conditions. And as before, these options are presenting in a way that’s frustrating and confusing.

For starters, in addition to being able to reset the camera to its factory defaults, you can also create two stored configurations and reset to those instead. the The camera can be reset to factory defaults via the first shooting menu, but it can also be set to one of two stored configurations. It isn’t hard to do; right on the first shooting menu there’s a Custom Reset listing, with the option to store the current camera settings as Reset1 or Reset2, or to apply either one if you’ve already stored them. Any other camera manufacturer, though, would have called these Custom Settings or Custom Modes. And if they’re really good, they let you give them meaningful names (Sports or Indoor, for example), or maybe put them on the mode dial for quick access.

And if the bafflement level hasn’t already hit 11, there’s another, entirely separate way to accomplish nearly the same thing. This one is called My Mode, and allows you to store a variety of shooting settings as My Mode 1 or My Mode 2. The only way to access the My Mode feature is to assign it to the programmable (and much in demand) Fn button. And to actually use those settings, you have to hold the Fn button down while you press the shutter button. an uncomfortable pincer-like maneuver best undertaken by those with tiny, well muscled hands. It’s a powerful concept implemented very badly indeed.

Focus

The camera uses eleven autofocus areas, as shown in the diagram below. You can let the camera select one, in All Target mode, or choose one manually using the four-way controller. Since the leftmost button on the four-way is the shortcut for selecting an autofocus area, the process is fast and simple. You can also assign the Fn or movie button to automatically return the AF point to a predetermined target, but this doesn’t seem like a particularly compelling use of scarce button resources.

One of the major beefs with the Olympus E-P1 and E-P2 was autofocus speed. Actually ‘speed’ isn’t even the right word, since ‘crawl’ more accurately reflects the experience. In April, Olympus released a firmware update for the E-PL1 (and the other PEN cameras) that promises to improve autofocus speed by 15%. We updated our review cameras, took it for a test drive and (drum roll please)… found that the update lives up to its promise. Of course, the key question is whether faster is fast enough, and that really depends on what you’re shooting. When the lights are low, autofocus performance is still mighty pokey (and there’s no autofocus assist lamp to help out). In a normally lit room shooting candids, you’re probably going to be alright. Trying to follow the action at a school football game it’s hit and miss.Initial focus acquisition time is still going to make you miss out on some key plays. If you know who you’re shooting, though, lock on and use the continuous autofocus tracking option, you’ll succeed more often than not.

If you turn face detection on, the camera will find a face and focus on it when you’re using all target mode. If you’ve selecting an autofocus target manually, the camera can still use face detect for exposure control, but will focus on the target you’ve chosen.

Recording Options

The E-PL1 offers a choice of medium and low resolution settings when shooting in the 4:3 aspect ratio.

There are four JPEG compression settings: Super Fine (compressed at 1/2.7), Fine (1/4), Normal (1/8) and Basic (1/12). RAW files are recorded in the Olympus ORF format at full 4032 × 3024 resolution no matter what the aspect ratio setting, with the aspect ratio selection saved along with the image. when shooting RAW+JPEG, any of the four JPEG compression settings are available.